Game jam sprites — ship the jam, not the pixels.

The art is the bottleneck — not the code

You know the jam feeling: 48 hours on the clock, the mechanic's working, the loop is fun — and you've got a magenta box standing in for the player because nobody on the team can pixel a walk cycle by Sunday. The code moves fast when you're vibe-coding; the character art doesn't. So the placeholder ships, or you burn your last six hours in Aseprite instead of polishing the game.

PixelForge is the shortcut. Bring a photo of a real person — you, a teammate, your team mascot — and get back a recognizable 4-direction walk pack in minutes. The placeholder becomes a character, and you get those six hours back for the part the judges actually score.

A face to a walking character, fast

→ your character

It's a real photo in, a recognizable character out — not a stranger a prompt happened to describe. PixelForge keeps the cues that read at 48 pixels (hair, glasses, shirt color, build) so your jam hero is unmistakably that person.

How to get a jam character in minutes

No account, minutes, $5. Generated by an AI model, then finished by code — background truly removed, feet aligned to one baseline, 16 frames trued and sliced — so it drops in clean instead of arriving as a grey box you have to fix mid-jam.

First: will your jam's rules allow it?

The question a jammer should ask before buying any asset, so let's answer it straight:

• Compo-style solo divisions (Ludum Dare's Compo is the famous one) require making every asset yourself during the jam — a purchased pack is out, full stop. Don't buy one for a Compo entry.
• Team / jam divisions (Ludum Dare's Jam division and most weekend jams) generally allow outside assets you have the rights to — which a PixelForge pack is, license included — usually with a credit or disclosure line.
• AI-asset policies vary and change. Some large jams publish specific rules about AI-generated art; most itch.io jams leave it to the host. The pack is AI-generated then code-finished, so disclose it as AI-assisted where the rules ask.

Cast your whole jam team

One photo each turns your team into the cast of the game — a recognizable, aligned, ready-to-walk character per person, all in one consistent style because every pack comes out of the same forge.

player 1

player 2

player 3

player 4

Shown: four real packs — three forged from the founder's own family photos, the fourth from a real customer pack (the same one on the homepage).

What's in your $5 pack

Honest scope: PixelForge makes one playable character per photo — a 4-direction walk pack, nothing else. No tilesets, items, or UI. Budget your retries too: you get 3 free ones per photo, but each takes minutes you may not have at hour 47 — forge the cast early in the jam, not at the deadline.